I've been scratching for solid ground recently. I think maybe, the toll of moving has resurfaced now that I'm home and immersed back into the world that I used to call home. I haven't even written a blog post in so long, it feels like I can't even remember how to do that. My last post was about fitting in and belonging as soon as I got to Oregon. Happy to report, it wasn't that difficult. Thanks to school and a healthy dose of putting myself out there, I easily found an amazing support system and a place to look forward to going back to. It feels strange to me that it happened so quickly since I've always thought of myself as someone who doesn't put themselves out there quickly and easily. How fast our thoughts about ourselves can be proven wrong under the right circumstances. That's what this blog post is about.
When I was moving I had a lot of time to think. Far too much in my opinion, but it allowed me to really spend some time with the thoughts that I have about myself. It helped me to realize how quickly a prophecy can come true when you are the one with power over it. Given the opportunity to go meet up with new people for the first time the sneaky gremlin of I'm not the type of person who makes friends easily would appear. How easy it would be to follow that gremlin back to it's cave and sit at home all night. The cycle appears! And I become a person who doesn't make friends easily because, a) I already think that and b) I don't show up to the opportunity for change. On top of that, my gremlin is happy; soooooo happy. You see, gremlin's don't like being proven wrong. It's so uncomfortable for them. Our brains seek efficiency and old gremlins are very efficient. A friend of mine and I recently renamed gremlins, blind spots. And they are everywhere in our minds. By choosing to follow my gremlins, I'm grabbing their hand and closing my eyes. Seems like a loss of power and individualism, huh? Blind spots can come in all shapes and sizes from I'm not the type of person who makes friends easily, to I need the perfect bikini body to find love. Blind spots can appear from anywhere. A lot of them show up without us even realizing. From the brief exposure to developmental psychology that I got last quarter in school, I've come to realize something about people. Everyone is a product of their environment; think about your life as a pinball machine. Everyone has taken a different path, we've all hit different sides of the machine and in a different order. We're really, not even all playing on the same machine. And because of the pattern of our pinballs, we develop blind spots. I grew up with a doctor for a father, I had blind spots to alternative means of taking care of the body until those blind spots were illuminated. It's no one's fault, that was just where my pinball hit a wall. We even have societal blind spots; creating the man, woman, 2 children and a dog home is the only way to be happy, when someone breaks the law the only way to keep the rest of society safe from them is to put them out of sight. Think about it this way, anything that you can say or think with only one possible explanation and little evidence behind it, this is the only way I'll find joy, I'm inferior if I make less than my partner, etc.... probably blind spots. Scary, huh?
Blind spots are scary. Don't let me tell you otherwise, I'm not trying to. They freak me out too. Think of your thoughts and mind as an expansive field, it's sunny and bright, the grass sways in the warm breeze. But then, there are some places in the field where a vortex black hole lives, it pulls thoughts in swirls them down to their simplest form and a creates binary boxes for them to fit in. Good/bad, black/white, all/nothing. And finding your blind spots forces you to challenge your own thinking. Who wants to do that? Because if you challenge your own thinking then who do you trust? Since being home, I've discovered a couple blind spots that I didn't even see coming. I made a huge mistake moving. Now, let's work through that one together because I'm not going to just sit here and blab at you about finding your blind spots, I'm interested in shining the light. This comes with a major warning label though, the feeling of being unsettled, "scratching for solid ground" that I just mentioned, it comes from having blind spots revealed. Revealing blind spots is exhausting. Like I said before, gremlins and blind spots are comfortable places in our mind. When we fulfill our gremlins they sit quietly. When we challenge them, they throw a fucking tantrum. When we see someone swerving late at night and call the cops to report a drunk driver, we feel good. We've fulfilled our duty to society to keep drunk drivers off the road. Maybe that person was drunk and driving, that's pretty dangerous. But, maybe it's a young man and his wife in labor trying to get to the hospital. Maybe he did have a couple drinks that night, and maybe they should've called an ambulance, but maybe they are living paycheck to paycheck and can't afford that. In this situation, our gremlin was proud, but this man now has a DUI on his record, and how is that going to effect the rest of his life? With a new baby? Soooo, the way we battle our blind spots is to allow in possible alternative explanations. Rise above the vortex and look around. Some helpful questions to ask to our blind spots can be, how did you get here? Why does that seems like the only answer? What is my evidence for that? So back to my blind spot of moving. What is my evidence? None. In some of those fleeting moments of boredom or loneliness that all humans come across, the vortex is tempting. It's an explanation after all. And our logical brains love explanations. But where would that get me? Going around thinking that just because my life on the east coast doesn't feel the same as it used to, and that somehow that feeling is a product of my own flaws... it's destructive. A possible alternative explanation could be that I'm experiencing those fleeting moments of boredom and loneliness that all human feel, and that soon enough that will pass. See what I mean?
I've noticed that we do this with other people a lot too. They are the only person who will make me feel _____. Wow, blind spot! And, it happens in both directions. I was sitting at a meditation class earlier this week and they were talking about how we don't dislike anyone, we dislike the feelings that they bring up in us. What if it's not even the person or the feeling, but it's the blind spot that they are illuminating that's uncomfortable for us? And what about the other direction? Do we like other people because of the feelings they bring up in us, or "the person who I am around them"? Have you ever said, I like them because I trust them to show me my blind spots? What if you did?
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